The ANC was set to emerge from victory on Wednesday, into a country that is a far cry from the one it ushered
into democracy in 1994.

And perhaps nothing
heralded the end of an era quite like the passing of old man Nelson Mandela on December 5 2013.

For the rest of
the month last year, the whole world appeared to take a collective breath to
lionise one of the most important statesmen of modern times.
South Africans
were in particularly introspective mood, many waxing lyrical about Mandela’s
magnetic charisma, judgment and pragmatism, his incomparable capacity to
forgive, which all combined to keep South Africa from imploding in the terrible
months before the first democratic elections in 1994.

Madiba is gone of
course; but the African National Congress (ANC) that romped to a resounding
election victory 20 years ago is still the party to beat as projections showed it had clinched its
fifth election victory on May 7. But many things have changed.

As has South
Africa; and the people who call it home.

While South
Africa has made serious progress since the end of apartheid, there are some
signs of the trouble ahead. The recent financial engineering that allowed
Nigeria ($509.9-billion) to overtake South Africa ($322.6-billion) as the
continent’s largest economy might be smoke and mirrors, but the spectacular
numbers have concentrated the minds.

Ideologically strangeSee, for reasons only Britain (the empire) and
USA (since 1914) can understand, South Africans have been quite proud of being
top dog in Africa. Until early April
they had the largest and most modern economy, by far the best universities, a
host of blue chip companies in retail, finance and industry, several
representatives on the famous Forbes list of billionaires, and a functioning
democracy just years removed from the opprobrium of apartheid.

Not anymore.

While Standard
Bank, M-Net, MTN, Shoprite-Checkers, Vodacom, Murray & Roberts and Co., continue
to expand across the continent and beyond, there is stagnation back home.

For one, the
ruling ANC is intent on promoting a brand of politics that is as ideologically
strange (it supports unbridled capitalism, but it’s in a ruling alliance with the
South African Communist Party and Cosatu, the country’s largest trade union),
as it is insincere (many of the party’s high and mighty have become immensely wealthy,
while millions of ordinary South African are still desperately poor).

Ironically, the
poor South Africans are at the heart of the ANC’s support base. And because
they are often uneducated and live in rural areas, their support is partly a
shared identity with the party of liberation, never mind that the ANC has been
in power for 20 years now.

South Africa is however, also highly urbanised and
it is in the peri-urban areas where a serious threat to the ANC is slowly emerging.
This has manifested in service delivery protests that have steadily increased
from 162 in 2008 to 470 in 2012, according to the Social Change Research Unit
at the University of Johannesburg.

ProtestsAnother recent survey
by the Institute for Security Studies concluded that there are an average of
4-5 protests a day around South Africa. And in Gauteng, South Africa’s richest
province and the engine of much of its growth, police estimates put the protests
at 500 in 2014 alone, with 100 of them turning violent.

Disenchanted young men
and women will be seen singing struggle struggles as they burn tires, over-turn
garbage cans into the streets, stone police vehicles, and occasionally smear
government buildings with faeces. Their complaints
are almost always the same. There is high unemployment (officially at 24
percent, but unofficially thought to be close to 40%. The lack of water,
electricity, toilets, decent schools for their children are big too. As is the
lack of action against rampant corruption at local and national levels, which
many blame for their problems.

Because it runs the national government, eight
of the nine provinces and all the major cities except Cape Town, the ANC has nowhere
to hide over these protests. The party’s response has not often been stellar
either.

There is for
example, the little matter of over R250-million ($25-million) of tax-payer funded upgrades on the private home of President Jacob Zuma in rural KwaZulu
Natal. Some of the alleged security upgrades were comically disguised too - a swimming
pool was referred to as “fire pool,” while the kraal, lifts and houses for his
extended family were all deemed to be central to the president’s security.

Angered manyYet while this
and similar excesses have angered many white South Africans as some of the
growing black middle class, the Democratic Alliance (DA), South Africa’s main opposition
party is viewed with suspicion outside its traditional white and “coloured” constituencies.
The rest of the opposition to the ANC is way too insignificant.

There are observers
who argue that the point of rapture will only be reached when (and not if) the
ANC splits down the middle, into conservative and radical wings.

Such a scenario
would make national and local politics more competitive; and elevate South
Africa to the political horse-trading common in Europe. It’s only then, these
observers argue, that the ANC will take its mandate for a “second liberation”
seriously.

As things stand,
the party, and the country are in a spot of bother.

And Nelson
Mandela is no longer a fall-back position.

Sim Kyazze
is a Ugandan journalist living and working in South Africa.